Santa thought

Just a little one to mention that over at www.neilgaiman.net, the DreamHaven Books site, they have the three DreamHaven audio CDs up. (You can see links to the CDs, and to Angels and Visitations, my first short fiction-and-stuff collection on their front page. Go further in and you will find much wonderful stuff -- http://www.neilgaiman.net/signed.php is the first of five pages of stuff they have for sale signed by me or by fellow conspirators of mine.... like Gene Wolfe, here interviewed at Fast Forward, and look, there's an entire edition of Green Man Review devoted to Charles deLint. But I wander from the subject. Audio CDs. Right.)

Each of the pages for the DreamHaven CDs has a sample track up from that CD, in MP3 form.

Warning: Contains Language, which was my first CD (and is actually a double CD), has, as its sample track, me reading "Nicholas Was..." my hundred-word Christmas Card to the world. (No, I'm not linking to the MP3 of it directly. It's DreamHaven's bandwidth, after all, and you can at least do them the courtesy of going and getting it from them directly.)

I was thinking about that the other day, and it occurred to me that if anyone feels like doing a seasonal remix or mashup of "Nicholas Was...", and sending me a link to it through the FAQ line, I'd happily and seasonally link to it here. In theory, at least, you would need to get it done by the 21st of December, as I have plans to be far from computers between the 23rd and the 30th of December.

It might be fun, anyway.

...

Which reminds me, I've been getting messages from all over the world recently complaining either that people can't download audio content from iTunes or Audible in the country they live in, or, more rarely, complaining about the price of downloading audiobooks, or the limited selection, from their local version of iTunes, and asking if I can fix it.

Your faith in me is gratifying, but no, I can't fix it. It's way out of my control. What I can do is point out a fairly simple workaround.

Buy audiobooks on CD and rip them yourself. Anything out there on Audible etc -- with the exception of the complete Maddy Interviewing Me -- is on a CD. In the case of Anansi Boys and American Gods, you can even buy them on MP3 CD. (Sometimes there's even a free streaming audio up of an entire Audiobook.) You can also, if price is enough of an issue, check out places like half.com or eBay -- people are much more likely to sell on audiobooks after they've listened to them.

Wherever you are in the world, CDs will work.

There. I hope that helps.

[Edit to add: Maybe we can do something after all. Ana Maria Alessi at Harper Audio has had an idea about all this, which she is now investigating. For the first time in six years we might actually put some paid content on www.neilgaiman.com -- I'll keep you posted.]